Was anyone else horrified because they thought the powerplant was going to be run by a Microsoft AI? (TFA is about Microsoft purchasing nuclear power to run their AI)
Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal
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Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal
#22More nuclear is a good thing. FAANG nuclear is even better, because they will be be ready and equipped to push back the insane NIMBY crowd(s) and also don't need to be worried about getting reelected.
How are nimby crowds insane? Accidents may happen. And did happen in the past in that same place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
If only safety was a matter of system design and operational practices, not geographic location.
Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal
#23So how would this work? Does this mean Microsoft will build a directly connected data center nearby? Or is Microsoft just buying power from the plant's owner on the energy market?
Presumably they’ve signed an agreement to buy the power (delivered through the grid) from the plant operator at a contracted price. The plant operator can then get finance for the work required to actually deliver on the contract.
A lot of renewable energy projects were financed through similar agreements, called PPAs.
Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal
#24Wow. AI has already accomplished more positive in a few years of big commercial stuff (admittedly as a side effect) than cryptocurrency has since, say 2009. :(
How is this positive news?
If using a ton of energy has to happen then I'd prefer it be generated from nuclear, but I don't see the need to supply LLM data centers with a ton of energy as a positive.
Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal
#25[flagged]
I don't think insults are called for, but I directionally agree that protests against atomic power, largely based on needless fear and lack of understanding, caused the world a lot of damage. If we could compare the world we have today to the counterfactual where anti-nuclear protests hadn't stopped progress, I believe a lot of people would be ashamed of their actions. Some already are. But the net effect of the anti-nuclear movement was to prolong the use of fossil fuels by many critical decades.
Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal
#26While this is better than loading up a coal power plant, the way I see it, it's still a tragic situation. Even if AI used purely fossil-free electricity (which it doesn't), it's still putting pressure on our grids and energy production. The green energy AI consumes if the green energy some other less lucrative industry will not consume. Big tech is currently scraping their net neutrality plans left and right...
Yeah, that's how economies work? If someone offers more for a resource, they get it. More incentive to build better grids.
Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal
#27> restart one of the units at the noted Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania
Ah yes, the ‘noted’ Three Mile Island. I wonder why this particular plant enjoys a degree of fame? The name certainly is familiar…
Seems like a rebranding might have made sense - like the UK switched Sellafield to Winscale.
Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal
#28More nuclear is a good thing. FAANG nuclear is even better, because they will be be ready and equipped to push back the insane NIMBY crowd(s) and also don't need to be worried about getting reelected.
How are nimby crowds insane? Accidents may happen. And did happen in the past in that same place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
Because the alternative, fossil fuel generation, is much, much more polluting and deadly.
Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal
#29So how would this work? Does this mean Microsoft will build a directly connected data center nearby? Or is Microsoft just buying power from the plant's owner on the energy market?
They are just buying the power. Microsoft's goal is 24/7 matching, so every MWh of power they use is matched by a MWh of clean power (generated in that same hour) that they paid for. This is called market-based carbon accounting, as opposed to location-based accounting which considers the source of the electricity that is actually used by the company's infrastructure.
There are pros and cons of each approach, market-based is a little less intuitive but not necessarily worse, it depends on the application.
Re: Three Mile Island nuclear plant restart in Microsoft AI power deal
#30No battery farm can protect a solar/wind grid from an arbitrarily extended period of bad weather. If you have N days of battery storage and the sun doesn't shine for N+1 days, you're in trouble.
Nuclear fission is the answer.
Today there are 440 nuclear reactors operating in 32 countries.
Nuclear fission power plants are expensive to build but once built the plant can last 50 years (maybe 80 years, maybe more) and the uranium fuel is very cheap, perhaps 10% of the cost of running the plant.
This is in stark contrast to natural gas, where the plant is less expensive to build, but then fuel costs rapidly accumulate. The fossil fuel is the dominant cost of running the plant. And natural gas is a poor choice if you care about greenhouse emissions.
Sam Altman owns a stake in Oklo, a small modular reactor company. Bill Gates has a huge stake in his TerraPower nuclear reactor company. Amazon recently purchased a "nuclear adjacent" data center from Talen Energy. Oracle announced that it is designing data centers with small modular nuclear reactors (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41505514).
In China, 5 reactors are being built every year. 11 more were announced a few weeks ago. The United Arab Emirates (land of oil and sun) now gets 25% of its grid power from the Barakah nuclear power plant (four 1.4 GW reactors, a total of 5.6 GW).
Nuclear fission will play an important role in the future of grid energy. But you don't hear about it in the mainstream news yet. And many people (Germany, Spain, I'm looking at you) still fear it. Often these people are afraid of nuclear waste, despite it being extremely tiny and safely contained (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage). Education will fix this.
Nuclear fission is safe, clean, secure, and reliable.